Solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to take a tougher approach to non-disclosure agreements, a leading legal ethics expert has told MPs. Professor Richard Moorhead linked the issue to a wider approach to ethics among solicitors that he described as “minimalistic professionalism”, including wrongly seeing the client’s interests as paramount.

A solicitor who “abrogated any responsibility” for her firm’s finances, allowing her fellow partner to take £512,000 from its accounts over five years to feed his gambling habit, has been fined £20,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. She argued that he “deliberately concealed” his misconduct from her.

The head of marketing at a firm that took money from the scandal-hit Axiom Legal Financing Fund has been banned from working in the profession after he accepted kick-backs from referral fees paid with Axiom money.

The interim chair of the Legal Services Board has explained to MPs on the justice select committee why the oversight regulator rejected their plea to postpone a decision on the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. The committee called on the board to defer its decision for six months.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to simplify its system for granting waivers to regulations in order to promote innovation. It is also formalising its ‘innovation space’, which it describes as a “safe space” which allows firms with novel ideas that may push the boundaries of the current rules to test them in a controlled way.

Two solicitors have been struck off for their role in an insurance fraud that cost victims £426,000. They were the first solicitors caught by the City of London Police Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said both had been “motivated by greed”.

Law firms handling claims over mis-sold payment protection insurance are charging clients more than both the level the Solicitors Regulation Authority deems reasonable and the cap that will shortly be imposed on them by government, research by the regulator has found. It also criticised the use of standard letters, which will resonate in other process-driven areas of law.

Indemnity insurance reforms put forward by the Solicitors Regulation Authority last month will damage the small firms the regulator is trying to help, a specialist law firm has warned. Legal Risk LLP attacked SRA plans aimed at reducing the burden of indemnity insurance.

The local authority budget for specialist legal advice and IT connected with the criminal investigation and public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire has been increased to £5m. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea approved the new figure at a raucous council meeting. Most will go to law firm DWF LLP.

A partner has been struck off for transferring over £40,000 to his own bank account while claiming it was used to pay a costs draftsman and a marketing company. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said Mohammed Asif Din “knew the money was being paid to him”.

An associate in a regional law firm’s Court of Protection team has been convicted of the wilful neglect of her own elderly mother, who died in squalor despite the solicitor having power of attorney to act on her behalf.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has removed the conditions on the practising certificate of a solicitor fined for allowing improper payments to be made out of client account. It said he had shown “insight and remorse” and “carved out a new area of expertise in which his previous misconduct was unlikely to be repeated”.

An online legal services pioneer has described the current rules preventing solicitors from practising at unregulated firms as “insane”. Former solicitor Tessa Shepperson backed plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to change the rules – a move strongly resisted by the Law Society.

A young woman who worked for a Derbyshire sole practitioner was an employee and entitled to maternity pay, the First Tier Tribunal has held. Rebecca Scothern was the niece of Karen Burley, office manager at Paul Brook Solicitors in Chesterfield.

Tribunal judgments in the cases of two non-lawyers involved in the finances of defunct law firm Cobbetts LLP have been published, marking the latest chapter in the disciplinary aftermath of the failure. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal approved agreed outcomes relating to allegations against the firm’s former financial director and partnership tax accountant.